Chapter 9 foursome

The organizers of the music festival were four young people in their twenties at the time.They are: John Roberts, Joel Rothman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lange. Roberts came from a wealthy family. His father, who opened a toothpaste factory, set up an entrusted fund for him, stipulating that he could receive $250,000 when he turned 21, one million when he was 25, and $100 when he was 30. million, and another million at 35.You know, this was the 1960s, and one dollar at that time was roughly equivalent to ten dollars today, so Roberts has never tasted the feeling of being short of money.According to the usual practice of children from rich families, he went to an Ivy League school, and after graduation he went to work as an analyst on a New York stock exchange, but he had no interest in this job at all.At this time, he met Rothman, who was the same age, on the golf course, and the two quickly became good friends.Rothman, also from a wealthy family, came to New York to practice law after graduating from Yale Law School.Like Roberts, he was bored with his job.Soon after the two met, they quit their respective jobs and moved into an apartment, planning to do something big.

At the same time, Kornfield, the vice president of the "Capital" record company, received in his office a young man who was said to be from his own country.This Kornfield considered himself a hippie, even though he had made his fortune writing slobber songs for pop stars.But that day when he opened the door, he knew he was wrong. The young man who came in was the real hippie.He was handsome, with shoulder-length curly long hair, barefoot, and soon after he sat down, he casually rolled a marijuana cigarette, lit it and handed it to Kornfield, who was Lange. The Lange opened the first "Head Shop" in Florida a few years ago, a hippie paraphernalia that sells pipes, incense, psychedelic posters, printed and dyed T-shirts and handmade decorations. There is now one such store in almost every city in the United States.Later, he started the "acupuncture head" business and once organized the "Miami Pop Music Festival".The music festival held at the end of 1968 attracted 50,000 spectators, making it one of the largest music festivals of the year.

Before 1967, the open-air music festivals that lasted for several days were mostly limited to folk songs and jazz. It was not until the Monterey Music Festival in 1967 that this situation changed.Although the music festival attracted 50,000 people, the venue rented by the organizing committee was actually very small, only able to accommodate 7,100 people.Although the box office is not high, the film copyright has sold a lot of money.In addition, the music festival was a non-profit activity, and the bands that participated in the performance received only a small amount of compensation. As a result, the organizing committee still made some money. Promising business.Because the cost of venues and facilities is relatively fixed, the trick to making money is to try to attract more audiences, and to do this, you must invite many bands to perform on the same stage.Fifteen bands were invited to the two-day Miami music festival hosted by Lange.

Throughout 1968, dozens of music festivals were held across the United States, but very few of them were successful.There are several reasons for this: First, music festivals require a large upfront investment, and many small acupoints do not have that much money, so they cut corners on the quality of bands and venue audio and other hardware equipment, and the quality of performances is naturally not much better. Go, live recordings or film copyrights can no longer be sold; second, many hippie audiences are unwilling to pay for tickets, and almost all performances have been impacted by these hippie audiences; third, and the most important reason, This kind of performance is often accompanied by hippie-specific phenomena such as drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. Conflicts often break out between the audience and the police who maintain order, and if they are not handled properly, they will turn into riots. The worry is not just about making money.For these reasons, there were very few music festivals held in the United States in 1969, and everyone was intimidated by the failure of the previous year.

Come back to Langer.After organizing the Miami Music Festival, he moved to Woodstock because his favorite singer, Dylan, lived there.He was going to try his hand at being a band manager, and he was meeting with Kornfield in order to sell a rock band he was running to Capital Records.Unexpectedly, the band did not sell, but he and Kornfield hit it off and became good friends. Lange told Kornfield about another money-making idea of ​​his own.It turned out that although Woodstock had attracted musicians including Dylan, The Band, Hendricks, and Joplin to settle there, the town didn't have a recording studio.Singers have to drive two hours to New York to record.Lange believed that if he could open a recording studio in a small town, he would definitely be able to make money.Coincidentally, the lawyer Kornfeld hired was also working for Roberts and Rothman.After the lawyer's matchmaking, the four finally got together in an office in Manhattan on February 6, 1969.

Lange and Kornfeld presented their vision of the recording studio to Roberts and Rothman, hoping that the latter would provide construction funds.But the four of them discussed it, and they all felt that it would be better to hold a performance first, so that they could raise the funds needed to build the shed.They decided to act immediately and formed a "Woodstock Ventures, Inc." (Woodstock Ventures, Inc.), each holding 25% of the shares.Roberts was in charge of paying the money, Rothman was in charge of finances, Kornfeld was in charge of public relations, and Lange was entrusted with the important task of being in charge of the preparations for the entire show because of his experience in organizing the Miami Music Festival.To this end, he recruited several experienced people who worked together in the past to be responsible for a series of necessary matters such as the venue, performance equipment, logistics support, personnel and security.